Breadth Thrusts & Bread Crusts: Overlooked Cucumbers & Missed Opportunities

JC Parets
July 28, 2022

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

It's not the first thing I do in the morning (a cup of coffee and some devotional time take precedence) but early each day, I am out in the garden. Hose in hand, I water what needs to be watered. I'm also observing – noticing weeds, identifying what needs to be propped up or redirected, and making a mental note of what is ripe and ready to be picked.

Right now, it's cucumbers – a lot of them. I'm giving them away as fast as I can. But I still had to pickle a bunch this past weekend (Capital Preservation in investing parlance). They are almost hydra-like this time of year. Eat one and there are three more ready to be picked.

We have two varieties (with a third, if it makes it, on its way). The first, Dragon Suhyo Cross, is a spiny, curvy cucumber that can be a foot long. Its lack of seeds and palatable skin make it delicious for eating fresh out of the garden. We also have Wautoma. This is a more conventional pickling cucumber. It's best when it's 4 to 6 inches long.

When it's time to pick, I scour the plants. Experience has taught me that I’m most likely missing something. Inevitably, one gets overlooked. That happened again last night. Despite my diligence, my son brought in a specimen that was way too big to be appreciated. Funny thing is that as we went out so he could show me exactly where he found it, we actually spotted another overgrown cuke that had also managed to evade observation.

I can (and do) look the plants over – up and down, back and forth, turning over every leaf. I have in my mind the knowledge that something is being overlooked and am trying to avoid that outcome. But still I will miss an obviously ripe cucumber.

It’s a humbling experience with applications beyond the garden. I have a routine when it comes to market related information – charts to review, numbers to crunch, spreadsheets to update. It's a broad net designed to avoid getting swayed by just one input (we call it a 'Weight of the Evidence' approach). In casting broadly we pick up some garbage along the way that needs to be discarded. But we do this to avoid the cucumber problem. We don't want to be so set in the way that we look at things, that we overlook important new developments. Unimportant things that we know about we can ignore – important things that we don't know about can be expensive.

There is no single right way to go about it. 

What works for me will not work for others, and vice versa. That’s fine. For all the numbers and all the decimal places, this is still as much art as it is science. 

Develop a rhythm, stick to a discipline, but adapt as necessary. Lean on what you know, but keep any eye out for what could be new and useful. 

My experience is that there are a few overlooked cucumbers out there. It's better to pick them before they get over-ripe.

 

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